The Days of Our Ridazz.

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Okay so you may or may not remember me posting about how a coyote lunged at me a while back while riding in Griffith Park in
this thread...

Well, I've had another run-in... and it was MUCH WORSE.

Last night, RBI and I were riding home from the Poke-ride (which was great, Tarsis!) and we decided to cut through Griffith Park to Burbank, like we always do. When we got to the entrance, RBI needed to stop to take a leak, but told me he'd catch up.
So, I start riding into the park, fairly slowly so that he could catch up, and also because I was exhausted. However, as I'm riding along I hear something rustle the bushes directly behind me and I look back to see a coyote running after me!
So I decided to start sprinting to get this thing off my ass, while screaming my head off (I mean, c'mon... it's pretty fucking freaky, and I've also heard that yelling at a coyote will scare it off). It refuses to give up though, and just starts sprinting FASTER trying to catch me. By this point I'm going as fast as I possibly can, turning back every few seconds to see if I'm losing it. I am not, and it's so close I can hear it's nails on the pavement. I start screaming and howling more to either scare it away, or at least let RBI that I needed help and FAST. I come to a little hill, which slows me down, and the coyote gains on me until it's about 15 feet away, and I'm FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. I can see RBI's light in the distance, catching up. I'm just pushing it as hard as I can, screaming as loud as I can for about a mile, until I look back to see where the coyote is, and lose control of my bike and fall to the ground pretty hard. I stood up, scrambled to my bike, and by then RBI was there, and had been yelling so the coyote took off.

We rode out of the park...while I was pretty much in hysterics, and more exhausted than I've ever been. My bike seems alright (minus scratches) and I've just got scrapes and bruises on my arm and knee... but I'm fine. It's safe to say that I will never ride through that park alone ever again... and it may be a while before I can go in there at all.

So... WTF?!!! This is supposedly extremely uncommon.... so why are these things coming after me like I'm made out of ham???

Fuck, I can only image what it must have been like for you. That sounds awful and who knows what it would have been like if you fell worst and you were alone. I'd get some bear repellent and if any officer gives you shit about it, tell them about your TWO incidents. They still give you shit about it and tickets you, tell the judge about the incidents.

I hope you're OK. It really sucks going down and even worst in an incident like this.

@User1, it was by far the most terrifying experience of my life. I mean, I was in a gnarly car crash once, but that's like a second of extreme fear vs. several minutes of constant terror. I do not like feeling hunted. If RBI wasn't there with me, things could have been infinitely worse.

@eddieboy... well... i wouldn't call it "fun"... but I definitely set a new sprinting speed record for myself. RBI said he saw my back light in the distance, and I was moving so fast that he thought I was screaming because a car had grabbed me and was dragging me or something.

Turn around next time and face it. Put your bike in front of you and stand as tall as you can. Hold your bike up as a shield in case it lunges at you but do not back away or run. Scream low and gutterly like a bear , not high-pitched like a deer or rabbit.

I ride in the hills at night and have had a few coyotes come out. I just get off my bike and lift it up over my head. It makes me look way bigger and scarier, and they always scurry off.

@skd yeah I considered that running away from it was a bad idea... but at the same time, when you're freaking out like I was, it's hard to muster up the courage to stop, hop off your bike, and put it in front of you... especially because it was so close that as soon as I slowed to a stop, it could already have been lunging at my neck. I also considered just turning around to face it and ride towards it to try and scare it... but once again... the courage would not come. It was seriously right on my tail.

yeah it pretty much chased you because you ran. The cayotes are too stupid to think "oh i can't eat this person" but when they see you running all they are thinking is "OH MAN I HAVE TO CHASE" and then when they catch up theyll probably realize "oh fuck i only weigh 30 lbs, im out of here"

moral of the story is, these animals are stupid, and when they do get to you theyll realize that they are fucked if they try to mess with a human.

and, from all I've heard and encountered....coyote packs won't go for people over four three feet tall, at the most....in the rare cases they attack humans, they are either rabid, and acting alone...or the are attacking toddlers or babies.

well it was definitely alone... not with a pack. The first encounter I had I was pretty sure the coyote was rabid... that thing was ill tempered and pacing all over the road. Who knows if the one last night was... i didn't hang around long enough to find out.

Alice was chased by a coyote last year in the park, near the merry go round, not long after dusk. Luckily, it didn't chase her too long or too far, but a little frightening all the same. I have heard that it's often the younger coyotes that will do this.

There is no reason to be afraid of coyotes unless you are a small child.

There have been maybe 20-30 documented coyote attacks on humans ever, and almost all of those were on small children.

Also, as for rabies, there have been 0 documented cases of coyote rabies in California for the 10 years on which I found data (97-2007).

Keep in mind, coyotes in the wild do not hunt large animals, they mostly scavenge and hunt animals much smaller than themselves, and they only weigh max 50 pounds. Dogs are much more dangerous, and much more likely to be irrationally aggressive.

Anyway, in general, it's a bad idea to act frightened in front of them, because that teaches them that they don't have to be afraid of humans. This makes incursions into trash bins and backyards more frequent, and attacks on pets and children more likely.

That is fucking terrifying. Glad you're okay. RBI to the rescue! I've considered riding through griffith to get home, but I never do it and end up taking the bus out of laziness. Now I'm really not going to do it, hah.

yeah, this was gnarly. ive never seen liz ride that fast. ever. i thought a car was hiding in the dark with its lights off and had grabbed onto her arm and wouldnt let go and thats why she was screaming.
ironic that the only run ins she has had have been with wildlife (of all things) since moving to los angeles and not sketchy people on skid row who want to steal her bike or something.

It wasn't trying to catch you. If it were, it would have caught you and at least made an attempt at a tackle or bite. You can't maintain a sprint long enough to outrun a coyote, especially up a hill (Their average running speed is 25mph, and they can sprint quite a bit faster than that). It may have been running along with you just for fun or may have been waiting for the rest of the pack to join in (highly unlikely to have a pack of coyote's act in a human-aggressive manner, though). Given that rabies isn't entirely eradicated in California, I can't really recommend that you try to face a coyote down, as you'd have a REALLY hard time dealing with a rapid coyote, but you might try slowing a little and see if he doesn't just pace you. I've been paced by Coyotes (and bears!) while mountain biking at night. It isn't entirely uncommon behaviour. Inevitably, coyotes in griffith park are going to be very desensitized to human presence, so it would seem to be even more likely there. Panicking is definitely the wrong reaction, however, both because your fear will egg the coyote on and because you are more likely to make a mistake and crash.

Thanks for the insight and advice everyone... that's exactly what I wanted out of this thread. Cuz as this whole thing was going on... I just really had NO IDEA what the intentions were, and what it would actually do if it caught up to me. I considered it was playing (dogs just generally have an instinct to chase things) and wouldn't do a thing to me, but I also considered it was completely batshit crazy and rabid... I just didn't know. I do want to learn more about coyote activity, and the stats on attacks... because I just want to be able to feel confident riding in that park again. I love it there.

Yea, facing the coyote and riding towards them would probly be the best bet -- I ran into a couple over Labour Day weekend on GMR and our headlights scared the crap out of them. (Possibly because we then looked like a car?) They ran from us for miles...

And while I'm not one to advocate hurting a woodland creature, but if you ride towards it and it's still going to try to charge at you -- steel vs. flesh, the bike is going to win. My friend just told me about a paceline that killed a large dog that darted in front of them.

"Officials with the California Department of Fish and Game estimate that roughly one person gets bitten by a coyote per year in California."

http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/coyote_attacks.html

It's pretty unlikely you'll actually get bitten by a coyote, but pepper spray never hurts. Check out these testimonials about people using it (successfully) to fend off bears and such - http://www.udap.com/testify.htm .

It's also possible that people are feeding them (yeah, people do that. and squirrels and rats, too) and it was looking for a handout. Being in GP that's reasonably likely. When I was biking in alaska we were waiting at a stop and saw the last (and smallest) of our riders coming in with a dog behind her. I was wondering whose dog it could be in the middle of nowhere, and why it had such big ears. Then I realized it was a wolf. We were all pretty freaked, but there apparently few or no documented wolf attacks on humans (and they're way bigger than coyotes) in alaska. Apparently it's pretty common for the truckers on the haul road to share their food with the wolves so they can get pictures, and it was probably looking for a handout.

So I just read the list of all the coyote attacks in Los Angeles county from 1979... and quite frankly I don't feel any better about the park... even though I'm confident that the coyote on Friday wasn't planning on attacking me.

Most of the attacks in L.A. happened because a coyote was trying to kill a pet, or a small child, and only attacked adults trying to defend them... However, packs of coyotes have attacked lone hikers. So... if there were 3-4 coyotes chasing me, that would have been bad news.

For the record, so far, no cyclist has been attacked by a coyote (although there was that time one lunged at my leg... but didn't actually bite me... but whatever...) But also for the record, mountain lions will attack and kill and eat cyclists.... and there's one in Griffith Park... so... yeah... uuuhhh... yeah.

The first incident when the coyote lunged at my leg was while I was riding in the morning before work, I'd say about 7:30 a.m. It did not chase me, just lunged at me as I was passing on my bike.

On Friday when the other coyote chased after me, it was probably 1:30 a.m. or so. I considered calling the park rangers just to let them know what happened and see if they could shed some light on the situation, but technically I shouldn't have been in the park at all, since it closes at 10:30.

As for the size... the one on Friday was large enough to make me run for my life.... um.... like your average full grown crazy-ass wild dog.

"...slower coyotes, which run between 35 MPH and 40 MPH, cannot catch it in this first half-mile, but the coyote has the endurance to maintain its speed over a greater distance until its faster prey gets tired and slows down..."

It happened just over the weekend on the ride down by the LA river. I turned around and first thing I thought about was, "woah a fuckin bear on the river!" Then I quickly realized it was just Adams. This happens to alot of other ridazz too.

My co worker rides trought there at 3:30 am to go home from burbank! He lives in Silverlake! He tells me stories like this all the time! But he never runs he usually does that stand off thing and wins! Just recently he saw a big cat or should i say mountain lion wich jumped out of a tree in front of him looked and went back in to the woods! He has been going around the park ever since That kitty sighting!

I got chased on the orangeline and desoto about a month back, the coyote was on the other side of the green fence the separates the buslane and the bikelane. So it could not get me. But it kept up with me for a while looking at me (until it hit a bush)

I was hanging out at the old zoo with about a dozen Tren Way when we heard coyotes in the distance. After a few minutes, a group of them approached us, but they were scared away by my headlamp. I saw maybe three or four coyotes' eyes reflected back at me. They seemed brave to approach such a large group of people.

Why was the coyote chasing you? Cuz you were RUNNING AWAY. To a coyote that's F.U.N.

With respect, you should stop presuming such behavior to be extremely uncommon. For decades and decades coyotes have been force-habituated to humans, either by encroachment or worse: by idiots who think they're "helping" by intentionally giving them food. Healthy coyotes are highly unlikely to attack anything they can't kill, so it was probably just scoping you out and enjoying the show of you screaming your bloody head off and falling down after trying to outrun it, which unless you can maintain a 25-30 mph pace, you won't be able to do.

I can pretty much guarandamtee had you stopped cold and come at the coyote hot and head on, the beast would've booked.

I've had coyotes trot along side me up in the fireroads of the Verdugos and I've just enjoyed the company.

Hey Robin, coyotes are "stupid" compared to what? Einstein? You? Coyotes are some of the most resourceful and successfully adaptable creatures on the planet -- and the only one to thrive after two centuries of man's attempt to make them extinct.

They may not be able to skid a fixie or solve a quadratic equation but they're certainly not stupid.

And in fact they are entirely capable of recognizing the risk/reward in attacking something they can't kill.

If coyotes are like small dogs then wouldnt running up to it cause it to insinctively attack? Just out of curiosity, have you or anyone you know tried it? Or were you just making an exaggerated example of their passiveness?

I've been around coyotes forever, they're common in the area. One thing I have to say is that the BIGGEST coyotes I've ever seen are here in the City, they're eating well. They're not afraid of humans, in general. It's likely they can sense your fear in some way, or like how you smell. I've been licked on the face by coyotes while sleeping, when I woke up, they ran. All I can say is you probably shouldn't run. You're bigger than they are, and they know it. One good kick at one that gets too close will likely make them leave.

...I'm just about ready to go back into the park for regular morning rides now (still won't go in alone at night). I'm actually dying to climb some hills before work... I just need a bike tune up first.

Is there anyone around Burbank who would be interested in joining me on some 6:30 to 8:00 morning rides to the Observatory (and around Griffith Park for some more hills)? I'm willing to try it alone like I used to... but company would be nice.

Yeah, I think a little kick if it got too close would probably be the best bet. Everyone keeps saying that I should have stopped, and tried to turn around and face it... but... i mean... when something is already running at you, 3 feet from your ass, going 25mph, I don't think it's physically possible to stop and turn around for a face off. That would require slowing down, which is a psychological fuck when you're being chased.

Yeah I heard if a dog (or coyote i guess) starts chasing you, you're supposed to get off your bike and put the bike between you and the animal as a shield and if it's going really nuts I guess you take a swing at it with your bike. They just get excited when it turns into a chase.

One time I was cruising really slow on my bike and I got attacked by a rabid squirrel. There was nothing I could do about that but run cause it could just go around my bike and get up on me. Seriously, people were freaking out like "wtf is up with that squirrel!"